The City of the End of Things
by Beguile
Summary: Blake meets knuckle dusters, knuckle dusters meet Blake, and everybody meets Oracle. Set three weeks into No Man's Land during The Dark Knight Rises. AU.
1. One

Disclaimer: The characters and concepts in this story are the property of DC Comics and their affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.

Summary: Blake meets knuckle dusters, knuckle dusters meet Blake, and everybody meets Oracle. Set three weeks into No Man's Land during _The Dark Knight Rises. _AU.

Rating: K+ for violence, some language, and mild sexuality.

Warnings: Smallish spoilers for _The Dark Knight Rises_.

Author's Notes: I have been looking for a way to write Barbara Gordon/Batgirl into the Nolanverse since _Batman Begins_, and I think _TDKR_ has the sort of environment she needs to flourish. In this story, I've taken some liberties with her origins, especially her identity as Oracle, but I hope you enjoy them. Apologies to purists!

The title is taken from Archibald Lampman's poem "The City of the End of Things".

Constructive criticism is always appreciate; flames are always ignored.

* * *

The City of the End of Things

One

John Blake knew better than to go walking alone at night in No Man's Land, but he didn't have much of a choice in the matter. One of Reilly's boys, Todd, had taken a bad fall that afternoon and ended up with a very large, very deep, and very infected wound on his leg. They had no antibiotics, alcohol, or peroxide, nothing that could help, not in the house or anywhere else in their territory. The government was still working on getting shipments of supplies into the city, and it wasn't safe to get to Gordon's territory until morning. Unless someone went scavenging, the boy wouldn't last the night.

Others had volunteered – a couple of bold teenagers with chips on their shoulders, looking for fistfights as assiduously as pharmaceuticals; a handful of grown men and women who were quick on their feet from the buildings up and down the block – but Blake ultimately declared that he would go. He wasn't looking for a fight, but if one found him, at least he knew how to handle himself. And handle a gun. Most of the pharmacies would be picked clean by now anyways. There was no reason to risk more than one life on what was probably a fruitless mission.

But Blake had to try.

"You stay within a block of our territory in every direction," Reilly warned as they headed towards the door.

"There's only one pharmacy within a block of our territory," Blake pointed out. He shrugged his coat on so strongly it was a miracle the seam on the back didn't split. They had survived three weeks now without a single boy dying, even with all the turf wars and crime going around. He wasn't about to let anyone die, especially not some kid would was just fooling around.

"I don't care," Reilly grabbed him by the shoulder and whipped him around. In an instant, Blake felt like he was a kid again getting a lecture from the old priest about minding himself. "You get there, take a look, find what you need, come back."

"And what if they don't have what we need? Huh? What then? I come back here and hold that boy's hand until he dies?"

"The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away," the expression on Reilly's face made it clear that those words hurt him more than they ever could Blake. "Better you're back here holding his hand than getting torn apart by the Cobblepott thugs or the Black Mask boys or some other gang making a move on our part of the city."

Blake pulled himself out of the older man's grip. As long as Reilly was playing the domineering patriarch, he would fall right back into his old role of rebellious youth. "Long as I'm out there, I'm gonna search every damn pharmacy it takes. One block away, two, five...I don't care. That kid is not gonna die. I'm not gonna let him."

"But what if you die?"

"Blake's not gonna die."

Mark had appeared on the stairs, much to Blake's chagrin. They already had one boy bedridden and near death from an injury in the house. He did not want to even entertain the notion of Mark coming along on this one.

The young boy didn't even bother asking though. "Blake can't die," he continued, "Oracle's not gonna let him. She told us she wouldn't."

Reilly didn't even dignify that with an eye roll. Oracle stories had been circulating around the neighbourhood since the inception of No Man's Land. People found tags on buildings around Gordon's territory along with piles of unconscious thugs. Some of the boys at the house actually claimed to have met her, but no one could give a consistent description, only that she appeared dressed in black when there was trouble. She was also known to pass along intel about raiders or gangs moving into the area with the boys. Blake had been the recipient of several messages, had seen eyes spray painted on walls around their territory as warnings, but he wasn't inclined to start trusting a mysterious benefactor, no matter how good the information was.

The stories were really taking a toll on Reilly too, but for different reasons. He loved that the boys had faith, had hope again, but he didn't like how misplaced that faith seemed to be. God was the only one who could guarantee Blake's safe return in No Man's Land, not a person with an eye from the sky.

Reilly let out a very deep sigh, a sigh that seemed to encompass all the times he had spent fighting with willful, orphaned boys over the decades he had been at the house. "Mark, I told you to stay upstairs and keep an eye on Todd."

"I was. Todd was asking for you," he replied.

Reilly shot a helpless look at Blake now, torn between two dying boys: the one upstairs and the one on his way out the door. Blake took advantage of the priest's silence. "See?" he said with a shrug. "I'm not gonna die."

Ten minutes and four city blocks later, Blake found himself wondering if maybe, just maybe, he had spoken too soon.

* * *

The political geography of No Man's Land, Blake's new pet name for the now anarchic state of Gotham City, was constantly changing, at least in their region. The north end of the city was a collection of major footholds for the most powerful Arkham and Blackgate inmates and their respective gangs., but the south end had been in absolute chaos from the moment Bane cut the city off from the rest of the country. Blake had assembled a ragtag group of citizens to defend a collection of now four city blocks with Reilly's at the centre. Their closest allies were in Gordon's territory to the east, an even smaller area surrounding the entrance to the tunnels where the cops had congregated underground. The streets and buildings in between were constantly in dispute by whatever crime lord or psychopath had missed out on attaining any of the areas in the north.

Reilly was right to warn him about the the Cobblepots and the Black Masks. They were trying to round up as much real estate as they could in the area, if only to keep the other gangs from getting their hands on it. Blake wasn't too worried about Cobblepot's men. Oswald "The Penguin" Cobblepot attracted the weak the cowardly into his employ; take out the right member in their group and the rest would disperse, terrified without strong leadership. Black Mask's boys were a real concern for Blake though. Bad as he had been at business, Roman Sionis knew how to manage a gang. His men were generally bigger, meaner, and smarter than Cobbepott's. They were the reason Blake brought his gun, because some of the Black Masks could definitely overpower him.

He checked with the sentries before leaving the area and heard that the night was unusually quiet. No brawls nearby, no thugs patrolling, nothing...That should have been his first indication that something was wrong, but Blake didn't think about that until later. He marched across the road and slipped down the back alley, coming on the pharmacy from behind. The back windows were broken, the heavy locked door torn off its hinges, but the inside was as silent as the streets. Blake almost left then and there: no looters meant there was nothing left to loot. Still, he stepped inside to inspect, finding nothing but toppled shelves and broken prescription bottles. The antibiotics were gone, likely drained by the same gangs Blake was so wary about avoiding now.

He ducked down behind the shelves when a light passed by outside. Bane's men on patrol, rolling through the streets in tanks and armoured vehicles, were scouring the streets for dissenters to the new world order. How that didn't include looters and thugs, Blake didn't know, but he had a pretty good idea about what they would do if they caught a cop stealing from the city for what they thought was the umpteenth time. He waited until the lights passed overhead and the sound of crunching gravel reached the next intersection before he leaned up to glance out the window. The street was empty again, and there was another small pharmacy less than three blocks away that he needed to get to. Blake left the way he came, checked the street once more in both directions to make sure that Bane's men were really gone, and then kept moving to the next block.

Perhaps it was the presence of Bane's men that made the two gangs fall so silent. It certainly wasn't Blake. Cops no longer held any kind of sway with the criminals. Anyone who wasn't already underground was put there by force, usually without the luxury of a pulse. If anything, the sight of a former cop, even Blake, who would have been a rookie or beat cop when some of these guys were put away, was enough to get them making noise again. He rounded the corner and found himself suddenly surrounded by beefy shadows, all of whom looked like they fought for the same gang in the dark. It wasn't until one of them started talking that Blake realized he had just stumbled into a turf war. Cobblepotts versus Black Masks. Winner takes the block.

He took a cautionary step back, but the sound of movement behind him brought Blake to a dead halt. There were at least eight of them to the front and a ninth hidden behind. Four of them were Black Masks, tall and meaty, with balaclavas on to show their affiliation. That meant the other four were part of Cobblepott's gang, not to mention the hidden fifth behind Blake waiting to pounce. Not the best odds or a fair fight, but Blake wasn't about to go down easily. Or at all. He had to get to the next pharmacy. These thugs could figure it out for themselves.

"Hey," one of the Black Masks said, taking a step towards Blake menacingly, "Didn't Bane put you in the ground?"

"I knew I recognized your face from somewhere, pretty boy!" a Cobblepot added excitedly. "Yous a cop! One of Gordon's boys. Yeah, I know you."

All eyes were suddenly on Blake. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Apparently, figuring out the turf war wasn't nearly as important as figuring out who got to kill the ex-cop.

* * *

Happy reading, everyone!


	2. Two

Disclaimer: The characters and concepts in this story are the property of DC Comics and their affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.

Summary: Blake meets knuckle dusters, knuckle dusters meet Blake, and everybody meets Oracle. Set three weeks into No Man's Land during _The Dark Knight Rises. _AU.

Rating: K+ for violence, some language, and mild sexuality.

Warnings: Smallish spoilers for _The Dark Knight Rises_.

Author's Notes: I have been looking for a way to write Barbara Gordon/Batgirl into the Nolanverse since _Batman Begins_, and I think _TDKR_ has the sort of environment she needs to flourish. In this story, I've taken some liberties with her origins, especially her identity as Oracle, but I hope you enjoy them. Apologies to purists!

The title is taken from Archibald Lampman's poem "The City of the End of Things".

Constructive criticism is always appreciate; flames are always ignored.

* * *

The City of the End of Things

Two

The one behind Blake attacked first, just as he was reaching for his gun. A small, knobbly hand clamped down hard on his wrist and an equally knobbly arm jabbed into his back in some hair brained attempt to knock him down. Blake almost felt bad about grabbing his gun with his other hand, spinning around and pistol whipping the little minion's nose into breaking. Almost.

Eight other bodies leapt into action at that moment, but Blake wasn't quite finished with the small one. He couldn't risk having the coward try something again later, so before challenging the hoard, Blake threw another punch and knocked Cobblepott's smallest completely out cold. Then he turned around to face the stampede.

Blake had made a career of brawling as a teenager. Most of it was play fighting or wrestling at Reilly's, but every now and then, in high school, he found himself alone against an army of kids looking to make the orphan boy feel just a little less loved that day. These were kids with parents and allowances, with stable homes and bright futures, and with way too much time on their hands. Most of them were pretty useless for anything more than a little name-calling and rough-housing, but a few over the years had made the wrestling team or took karate or were just born bad and could hold their own in a fight. They would ambush Blake in alleys like this one, mostly in broad daylight, but as their curfews got later Blake's penchant for sneaking out got stronger, the fights would happen after nightfall. It didn't take long for him to get just as good at kicking ass in the light as in the dark.

So when he turned around to face the other eight henchmen, Blake didn't panic. He didn't start firing, didn't turn tail and run for the street with the hope of them losing interest of losing him. He didn't even start throwing punches, though perhaps he should have. Blake calmly, coolly, and collectedly defended against the first few blows with his forearms, gauging the strength of his attackers and determining their possible weaknesses. Unfortunately, that gave them the opportunity to twist his gun out of his hands, disarming him. His firearm landed on the ground by his feet. Before someone else could grab it, Blake kicked it under the dumpster at the mouth of the alley. Then and only then did he slide between the nearest attackers and, after pausing for a moment to give them a chance to aim, ducked down and rolled to a better vantage point. They ended up punching each other. The bigger one, a Black Mask, won. No contest.

One of the Cobblepot's thugs started laughing at his fallen fellow henchman, earning some dangerous glares from the other members of the group. "Shut up, man!" one of them hissed. "You saw Bane's guys drive by a second ago. Keep it down and kill the cop!"

Blake never gave him the opportunity to try. Still kneeling, he drove a kick so hard into the back of the laugher's knee that the man fell forward into the brick wall. Blake remembered that sound from high school too: like a watermelon under a hammer, and then the laugher shut right the hell up. The homicidal murmuring from the other six he had yet to knock out cold, however, got a little louder as they rushed him in the dark.

Gun forgotten, two men unconscious: that was when the brawl really got started. As much as the Black Masks and the Cobblepots hated each other, they hated cops even more. Especially slight ones sneaking around in the dark. They had completely abandoned fighting with each other now and fought as a single collective unit, laying hit after hit on Blake from the front and the sides. He managed to hold his own in the middle of it all by moving slightly, shifting between the blows mere inches at a time. The action was subtle, but it was enough to space out his attackers evenly and leave room for evasive manoeuvres.

They taunted him with the usual. Blake didn't pay them much mind. Every minute that he spent dodging punches, blocking kicks, or landing blows or his own was another minute he wasn't en route to the pharmacy. That was another minute for Todd's fever to climb and for sepsis to take hold. He had to end this quickly. He needed to get to a better vantage point at any rate. Eventually someone was going to break through his defences.

Blake pushed several of his assailants aside with his left forearm, using the right to punch one man in front and elbow one man behind in one fluid stroke. That gave him enough time to focus on two rather burly Black Masks, but apparently they were going to take more strength than his arms and legs had to go down anyways. Blake made a mental note to save them for later, when he could retrieve his gun and even the odds a little bit. He pushed them away from the circle too, buying a few seconds of uninterrupted fighting with the smaller Cobblepot crooks behind him. A kick, elbow, knee, and final pair of punches took care of them.

Two Black Masks rushed him from behind, but Blake was quicker than they were. He kicked the legs out from under one, knocking him off balance. Blake used the momentum from the first's fall to take out the other, watching them collapse into a heap by the alley.

Just as he was rounding up for a good set of finishing blows for them, Blake heard the same wet crack from earlier, like a hammer to a watermelon, but this time it was closer, much closer. Back of his neck closer. A bright flash of light overtook his vision, and even though he knew something was wrong, very wrong, Blake still couldn't feel what exactly had happened. He felt numb, like someone had given his a shot of novacaine to the spine. Everything below his waist shut down while everything above flailed about wildly, reaching for anything to stop the world from careening so wildly out of control. His fingers found nothing but air to hold onto to. Instead, it was Blake's knees that found purchase first, dropping onto the cold concrete. His thighs, torso, arms, and face quickly followed suit.

Blake's vision returned in slow, uneasy waves. Asphalt and shadows careened in front of him, mingling intermittently with the feet and ankles of his assailants. He felt a kick to his right side and a stomp on his left shoulder, but the pain that followed was dull, muted by the throbbing on his neck and the overwhelming feeling that something about his body had gone horribly wrong.

Instinct took over when manual control failed. Blake struggled to prop his hands against the pavement, fighting disorientation the whole time, and when he did, tried to drag his feet under him till he was upright. He barely got into a lunge before whatever hit him before hit him again, this time to the left of his spine. Blake slammed against the pavement, right on top of his bent leg and left hand. He heard a grunt, probably his own, just as someone nabbed him by the shoulder and rolled him over.

The little one from earlier, the one who nearly had his nose torn off by Blake's gun earlier, the one who he thought was completely out cold, knelt down and straddled the fallen ex-cop's chest. He wasn't heavy, but Blake was already having trouble breathing from the blow to his back. Blake swung a punch and just grazed the bastard's destroyed nose, but one of the other shadows, a Black Mask, stepped down on Blake's opposite wrist and pinned him to the ground.

"Looks like the cop's ours, boys," one of the Cobblepots growled, "along with the alley."

Blake didn't give the remaining Blake Masks a chance to respond. He started thrashing, knees and ankles aching for a knobbly back to slam into, while he threw his remaining arm towards the face of the man sitting on his chest. The little guy yelped and lashed out with his fists on Blake's chest, shoulders, and face, shouting, "DON'T. YOU. TOUCH. ME. AGAIN. PIG!"

It was the punch to his cheek that caught Blake's attention. He thought he had underestimated the little guy's strength before, but as it turned out, the bastard had compensated for his size with a weapon. He was wearing knuckle dusters, knobby rusted bands of steel that sent shockwaves through Blake's entire body and damn near shattered his cheekbone.

"Oh, wow," Blake stammered when the little guy took a break from punching him. He spat out a mouthful of blood. "Someone call Stockholm. This guy's learned how to use knuckle dust-"

Evidently, he laid the sarcasm on just a little too thickly in his last assessment. The little weasel, who probably didn't have two brain cells to rub together, figured out that he was being made fun of and, in a show of disapproval, lay another punch on Blake's cheek. The blow had Blake seeing stars. He gasped and contorted on the ground from the agony.

"Hey, you've had your fun," one of the Black Masks tore the little one off of Blake's chest by the neck. "We both caught the cop. Let us get a few kicks in."

"Hey! This is Oswald Cobblepot's territory!" one of the thugs growled. "So he's Oswald Cobblepot's cop! We caught him!"

Blake wanted to point out that he didn't belong to anybody, but he was having a hard time concentrating while the world swirled around so wildly in front of his eyes and his lungs sputtered for air. He let the chill of the Gotham pavement carry him out of awareness for a few seconds. Somewhere out there, Todd was letting the comfort of one of Reilly's beds do the same.

He fuzzed back into awareness at that thought, just in time for the fighting to shift from him to the gangs again. The remaining Cobblepots weren't going to be a match for the Black Masks, but they didn't really care so long as the alleyway was there's by the end of the night. Blake decided this was as good a time as any to slink away for his gun, to get back to getting antibiotics, so he rolled onto his side that was less injured and shifted on the pavement, slowly.

A light shot on from the mouth of the alley, stopping everyone – the Black Masks, the Cobblepots, and the ex-cop - dead in their tracks. "Geez! It's Bane!" the Cobblepots tore off through the nearest exit. "Let's get the hell out of here!"

"What about the cop?" one the Black Masks asked.

"Leave him!" the other Black Mask replied. The sound of the Cobblepots getting beaten in the alley nearby was enough of an incentive. "Bane's men'll take him to the courthouse tomorrow. That's worse than anything we could do to him."

They took off through the opposite alley, away from the sounds of the Cobblepots getting thrashed. Blake rose to his knees and tried to listen past the sounds of his dizziness for footsteps, for approaching foot soldiers of Bane's revolutionary army. There were none. Cobblepot's men went silent, and that was followed by the stunned but quickly stifled cries of the Black Masks in the street.

Seconds later, the light went out, and the whole alley descended back into darkness. Blake blinked against the sudden change, fighting blindness. There were footsteps approaching him now, and a shadow grew taller and taller as it got closer and closer in the darkness.

"You stay away from me!" Blake shouted. He was going to get up after all and put up one hell of a fight...right?

No, his legs disagreed. They stayed on the ground, limp and useless, along with every other inch of his body.

The shadow deposited their light on the ground and closed the distance to Blake. He struggled as best he could, but he couldn't orient himself, let alone where the shadow was, even if the shadow was touching him.

"Shh!" the shadow hushed him, pulling him close in the dark. "Blake, it's me. It's Barbara."

The name didn't mean anything to Blake at first, but then he place d it: Barbara Gordon, Commissioner Gordon's daughter. Mild-mannered librarian, occasional hacker, and apparently crime-fighting vigilante. It wasn't just his head injury preventing this from making sense. "Barbara...wha?"

"Shh!" she hushed him again. "Bane has men patrolling the area. I don't know if they saw the light here or not. We have to move, now. Get up."

Ready or not, they were going, apparently. Blake tried to voice a weak protest, but Barbara, with a strength that exceeded her lithe frame, heaved him up by one arm. The movement was enough to jostle Blake's tenuous grasp on the alley, and he watched in horror as the pavement and the walls switched places.

"I'm good," he muttered in spite of himself. "I'm good. Gotta get to...uh...pharmacy. One of Reilly's. Just get to..."

He saw stars again; his stomach lurched. Whatever he had been trying to say – what was it? – got lost in a sudden, violent retch.

Barbara narrated his descent into darkness. "Ew," she said with a sigh, "Gross."

* * *

Happy reading!


	3. Three

Disclaimer: The characters and concepts in this story are the property of DC Comics and their affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.

Summary: Blake meets knuckle dusters, knuckle dusters meet Blake, and everybody meets Oracle. Set three weeks into No Man's Land during _The Dark Knight Rises. _AU.

Rating: K+ for violence, some language, and mild sexuality.

Warnings: Smallish spoilers for _The Dark Knight Rises_.

Author's Notes: Special thanks to M for reviewing, and those readers that put the story on their favourites. It was much appreciated!

* * *

The City of the End of Things

Three

Someone was pouring acid on his face.

"Whoa!" Barbara dropped the cloth she was dabbing on Blake's cheek and placed her hands on his bare shoulders, restraining him. He was all but jumping out of his skin in shock. "Easy, easy...Blake?" she leaned down until they were eye to eye with one another, but Blake's gaze kept darting over her and around her. Barbara slid her hand over his left cheek, the one that wasn't bleeding, and held his head steady. "John," she said sternly, "John, look at me."

It took Blake several long moments to get a fix on her. The burning on his cheek roused him into a whole world of other agonies: pain in his head, pain on his arms, pain in his chest...the awful taste in the back of his throat. He tried to breathe, but his ribcage was tight from injury, so every breath was more of a short, sputtering gasp. His vision started to fizzle into gray clouds again, the perfect match to his cloudy thought process. Blake fought harder this time though. He followed the feeling of Barbara's fingers on his cheek to the look in her eyes as she stared at him. Her words started to sink slowly through the thick blood pounding in his skull, and he let her command him to slow down, take it easy, just relax. "You're okay," she assured him, rubbing a thumb affectionately on his cheek, "You're okay..."

Blake stopped fighting, stopped searching. There was nothing else he needed to see except her green eyes, her fixed stare. That dogged Gordon determination shot right through him and cast aside all the gray clouds and disorientation. His chest started to loosen, and with every slow breath, shallow as it might be, his vision started to clear. He could make out Barbara's face first, got lost temporarily in her mane of messy red hair, was charmed to see she was still wearing a librarian issue cardigan in spite of losing her job to Bane's New World Order. The room beyond presented itself soon after, a sparse, stone-walled chamber dimly lit by two lanterns and a haunting, blue glow emanating from somewhere behind Blake. He was slumped in what appeared to be her only piece of furniture aside for a stool and a coffee table: a well-worn arm chair that rolled off the production line when Abe Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

"That was the most cogent you've been for thirty minutes," Barbara replied, rubbing his cheek one last time before drawing her hand away. "Welcome back."

"I said that out loud," Blake noted glumly. He winced when he realized that he said that out loud too.

Barbara picked up a damp cloth from his lap with a smile. "Don't worry about it. If you're able to make historical references, you're probably not bleeding into your brain. Do you remember what day it is?"

"No," he replied, swallowing hard against the stale taste of vomit lingering in his mouth, "But I didn't know what it was before I got pummelled in an alley."

"You remember the alley – good. What were you doing there?"

"Aside for getting my ass handed to me?"

A rush of panic ran through him. He had forgotten something, something important. Life-or-death important. He rewound his memories, from the beating he received by Cobblepot's smallest to the beating he gave the thugs of two warring gangs to Reilly's boarding house where Todd fell earlier and injured his leg.

Blake nearly leapt out of the chair all over again. "I gotta get to a pharmacy," he declared.

Barbara was faster this time. She had him by the shoulders and kept him seated. "Calm down, tiger. I sent some antibiotics with a friend over to Reilly's the second we got back here. They should have arrived by now."

"How did you...?"

"Criticizing my chair is not the only thing you decided to do in your out-loud voice, Detective. You told me the whole story on our walk here. Well, you mumbled the whole story on our walk here." She held up the rag again. "This is going to sting. Rubbing alcohol. Antibiotics are hard to come by, and I would hate to see that pretty face of yours get infected."

The smell as the rag approached his cheek was enough to make him gag, but Blake held his composure this time, breathing raggedly through the process. Barbara's touch was tender, but the alcohol was sharp, hot, and biting like a piercer's needle. It was enough to make him want to puke again, or at the very least lose consciousness. Unfortunately, the pain was acute enough that Blake's post-concussive grogginess dissipated completely, and he was fully aware of every subtle nuance pain was playing on his body. The fact that he was shirtless no longer escaped him either.

"Uh, what happened to my shirt?" Blake searched the seat for his clothes and found only a worn blanket had been draped over him, one he had thrown off in his earlier fit.

"I couldn't exactly check for cracked ribs through a jacket and tee," Barbara replied, drawing the rag away finally. She dug through an open plastic case on the coffee table, withdrawing a package of steri-strips from an orderly pile of other adhesive bandages. "You were lucky, by the way. He wasn't strong enough to crack anything, even with the steel knuckles, but he left a couple of good bruises."

Blake shrank into the chair self-consciously, tugging the blanket free from behind him. He had been shirtless around a woman before and was not prudish enough to think that he had anything Barbara hadn't seen. Still, she was the daughter of his commanding officer, the _only_ daughter of his commanding officer no less. If word of this reached Gordon, Blake would have bigger things to worry about then thugs in a back alley.  
Barbara tore open the package and peeled one of the steri-strips from its plastic backing. No amount of gentleness could stop her ministrations from hurting, but Barbara's fingers were incredibly light on his cheek nonetheless. Blake got caught up in her stare again. She had her dad's unyielding gaze, the kind that was honour and duty bound to see tasks through to completion. That could be something as small as a bleeding cheek or something as big as a city. He tried to imagine those same eyes glaring at criminals in alleyways, but he still couldn't imagine Barbara taking out the men from tonight. She was tall but thin, trained in martial arts but maintained the poise of a ballerina. He found it hard enough now, in No Man's Land, to walk the fine line between cop and criminal. How she managed to mind her contradictions was beyond him.

Three strips saw his cheek closed nicely. Barbara folded the remainder of the strips up and replaced them in her first aid kit. The pain in his face settled into a nice, slow burn, and Blake was almost dizzy from the decrease. His chest ached dully, the blood started to swell in his head again, and he had to slump into the chair, head resting along the back edge. "Thank you," he murmured. "You saved my life."

"You're welcome," Barbara replied, a soft smile working its way across her face again. Blake basked in the warmth of her grin every second her could. It had been too long since he had seen someone smile, even if Barbara's mouth offered more of a suggestion than anything else.

She picked up Blake's hand from the arm rest and handed him some Advil. "Where'd you get your hands on all this stuff?" he had to ask. "Antibiotics? Advil? Bandages? You must have raided every pharmacy in the neighbourhood."  
"No," she handed him a canteen of water, "just the right ones."

He downed the pills and took a few extra sips for good measure. The nausea was still creeping around his gut, rustling his abdominals a little bit, but the water washed away the stale taste of vomit leftover in his mouth from his earlier retching in the alley. "Never thought I'd see the Commissioner's daughter turn to a life of crime."

Barbara's eyes gleamed, and another smile appeared on her face, but this one was warmed by something other than the sweetness of thank yous. This was a clever, half-cocked grin. "It's only a crime if I don't pay for them."

"And how do you pay for drugs and bandaids in No Man's Land? Money's worthless here."

"Yeah, here, but all the pharmacies I shopped were national chains. They have a headquarters somewhere in the U.S., which I paid by an electronic transfer."

"Electronic transfer?" Blake shook his head, rubbed the good side of his face with his hand. "There's no internet in No Man's Land. There's barely power in No Man's Land."

"Are you sure about that, Detective?"

He balled his hands into firsts. Their conversation had entered sensitive territory for Blake now. He wasn't sure why the Internet was the subject that did it, but between the aftermath of the beating he received and the luxuries neither he nor anyone in the city had access to, Blake was just about ready to have it out with Barbara Gordon once and for all. "There's nothing here," he spat, "nothing. No cell service, no internet; no money, no drugs...barely any power in most of the city. So don't tell me you're transferring funds over the internet. If you could do that, why not do something useful? Why not work to save the city?"

"What makes you think I'm not?"

Blake glared at her. Three weeks they had been stuck in this hellhole. Three weeks without communication to the outside, without any type of provisions moving in or out of the city, and the only one with any resources at all was shopping online for pharmaceuticals. He opened his mouth to challenge her, to berate her for focusing on surviving instead of fighting, but the words rang hollow even in his head. He had seen Barbara work a hack on a laptop concussion from her living room with a concussion. She had just taken down several thugs to save his life, not to mention trekked who knows how far across No Man's Land to do it. If there was a way to save Gotham with her skills, she would do it. Or she would already be doing it.

A chill ran through him. "How did you know where I was tonight?" he asked. "All the alleyways in this city, you just so happened to come across the one I was in. How?"

Barbara let the silence eat away at Blake for a long moment. Or maybe she was debating whether or not she should even tell him. Or maybe time was just slowing down in lieu of his realization. Whatever the reason, there was a pregnant pause before she replied with simply, "Traffic cams."

Blake turned around in the chair to where the iridescent blue glow was emanating from. Behind him was an entire wall of computer monitors – small ones, large ones, fat ones, skinny ones – each streaming different content. Some was news broadcasts from other parts of the nation, others were security footage or images from traffic cameras, some were just endless streams of data and graphics that Blake couldn't quite place. Barbara had the entire city, most of the country, and probably most of the world under her watchful eyes from this place.

Eyes. Watching eyes. The thought finally clicked in Blake's brain, and he let out an exasperated sigh for not having known in the first place.

He turned back to face Barbara. "Oracle."

She leaned back on her coffee table. "I guess this is why Batman doesn't bring people back to his cave."

"You're Oracle," Blake had to say it again for it to sink in. That was probably his concussion talking again. He felt dizzy and leaned back into the chair. Barbara reached over and pulled the blanket over his shoulders a little further.

"The boys at Reilly's gave me the name," she said softly, "but it fits."

"How did you put all this together? More scavenging?"

"Nobody has much use for computers in the city anymore. Getting back on the network was the hardest part. Once I did that though, everything else came together pretty easily."

"The eyes on the street," Blake muttered, recalling all the tags that had been popping up around his territory and Gordon's, "all the intel on the gangs in the area, running antibiotics back and forth...that was all you?"

Barbara shook her head. "Not all me, no. I have allies. Reilly's boys are good messengers. An old friend of mine works...security." The way she hesitated told Blake that there were other words she would have used to describe it, but security was the best euphemism. "I've been trying to get resources shipped into the city for Gotham's citizens, but it's hard to find a safe drop point or even a safe method to do it. That'll take a little more time."

Now it was Blake's turn to smile at her. "Gonna need a bigger boat for that, Quint?"  
"More like an invisible boat," she replied with a smile, "or at least one that can bypass Bane's defenses."

Blake was stuck for a long while on the thought of her, neither cop nor criminal, something in between but far removed from the spectrum he'd been stuck in for most of his life. She had wanted to be more like the Batman, he knew, because he recognized that look in her eyes as one he caught in the mirror on occasion, but dressing up like a giant bat was a good way to get killed in No Man's Land. Hiding behind a computer monitor would have to do for the time being.

"Let's get you to bed, Detective," Barbara said.

"Oh, now," he said with a small laugh, "the Commissioner would really have my hide if I said yes to something like that."

Barbara didn't even bother responding to that. "Can you walk?"

Blake wasn't sure. His brain had settled at this altitude. The sudden change was bound to set him off course again, even if his legs felt more solid than they had back at the alley. He reached a hand towards Barbara then, which she took without any explanation and helped him up slowly.

His vision fizzled out again as he stood, which was just as well because it seemed like the walls and the floor switched places again. Blake slumped against Barbara, who held him up like he was nothing and waited patiently for his dizzy spell to pass. He clung to the feeling of the ground under his feet and to the solidness of Barbara's shoulders under his arm, blinking back the clouds until he found himself still standing in Oracle's base of operations.

They walked towards the stone wall at the back of the chamber. Blake was steadier on his feet this time, and the Advil had taken the edge off all the damage from the knuckle duster. He even took a few steps on his own when Barbara left him suddenly to extinguish one of her lanterns. She dimmed the other one until it was just light enough for them to see by and brought it with them into the darkest corner of the wall. Blake found that there was an opening there, one he hadn't noticed before because Barbara had hung a blackout curtain over it.

She pushed open the curtain, allowing Blake to step through. The smaller room had been fashioned into a makeshift sleeping area, with a cot along the nearest wall made neatly and tidily. The quilt folded at the base was one Blake recognized from the Gordon family living room.

Barbara left the lantern in the main chamber. She didn't need the light in here anyways. The smaller room was well-lit by a vast window, one that took up most of the wall. The whole of Gotham spread out beneathBlake like a sheet of black ice. He could see his neighbourhood in the distance under the cover of street lamps and sentries, could see shadows of thugs darting down alleyways and over rooftops, could see the lights from Bane's tanks prowling the streets, keeping their own definition of peace. He could see Wayne tower in the window's periphery, gutted and ransacked like a rotting wound, the perfect broken heart for the world's most notorious broken city.

"Is this the old clocktower?" he asked, taking another step towards the window.

"It is indeed," Barbara nodded. She pulled back the blankets on the cot for him.

Blake laughed at the sight of the city. From this distance, it was easy to forget about being cut off and separated, about being under the oppressive rule of a terrorist, about having to loot, steal, and fight for every breath. He felt safe finally, felt secure, felt like everything was going to be okay. When he looked back at Babs, those feelings didn't go away, but he was always aware of how fallible they were. He called it No Man's Land for a reason.

"Like the Babs-cave," he joked with her, eyeing her little fortress with a mixture of skepticism and relief, the same way he viewed everything, "here in the city of the end of things."

Barbara's third smile of the night was a sharp, decisive line. As determined as the Gordon's stare but more menacing, more intent, almost terrifying with its self-assuredness. "Oh, no, Detective," she said, "this is only the beginning."

* * *

FIN

Happy reading!


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